Eva
You don't get as many impressive cocktail-party stories as you would hope (“and that's why French-speakers ...!”). But Deutscher writes entertaining, and he is especially thorough. His task is to take the field of linguistic relativity - which has gotten itself into trouble by boasting with too big claims early on - and bring it back to a level of credibility. His careful study of the field's history, its early failures and its more recent small successes (word genders influencing associations, the russian blues, egocentric vs geographic coordinates) show in parallel the difficult history of devising empirical experiments dealing with the human mind that avoid any form of priming or vagueness.
Peut-être le livre parfait (à mon niveau) pour apprécier la langue française quand lire à haute voix.
la jeunesse, la naivite, la douleur, l'ennui, la tristesse ...
After an Irish girl living [b:Exciting Times 50175419 Exciting Times Naoise Dolan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1572990447l/50175419.SY75.jpg 73236926] in Hong Kong, we now have a British man in Ireland about to marry an Irish girl in London. Everyone's a millennial, queer, and the usual kind of messed up that makes for that laconic Dolan love-drama style. We start with the Happy Couple - Celine and Luke - and might not end up with a wedding. Examining along the way all the reasons why the couple makes or doesn't make sense. By the end, the only happy couple ending I wanted, was Celine and her piano! Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan character would definitely hang out.
A space opera based on a strong version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the principle that language influences thought. When learning the language, Babel-17, our protagonist first notices she starts to see new connections and similarities between unconnected concepts. Once fluent and able to think in Babel-17 her thought process speeds up and allows her to become a strategic mastermind. Yet there are also unwanted effects programmed into the core of the language.
The ideas are all there, but they are packaged into a rather fast-paced, character- and action-packed space opera that is too short to fully dive into all the linguistic and cognitive possibilities.
A dangerous downward spiral from innocence to random acts of senseless violence. A diary of a 12-year old girl, living in a world that's slowly falling apart amist growing poverty and civil unrest. While her country, her city, her family sinks lower and lower, her life is uprooted yet she stands strong and adapts. Her transformation is in her circle of friends, her exterior, her street-toughness, and most clearly noticable in her language, as she takes us on her journey in her diary.
Heartbreaking and jaw-dropping.
I was kinda into it, but I also wanted it to end.
I imagine even Denis Villeneuve won't want to make a movie of this.
A young woman enduring war-time hardship and defying the conventions of her time, this made for a great binge-read. The first half is set in WII in Malaya, and our heroine Jean Paget becomes the unappointed leader of a group of English women and children, who are marched across the island by Japanese prison guards. She uses her knowledge of the local language and an empathetic approach to foreign customs to negotiate for the group's survival. Returning to the site years later, she develops a good sense for how to help the Malay women and subsequently improve their communities. A skill she employs again in the second half of the book, as she explores the dusty and hot Australian outback. I liked her entrepreneurial spirit and success, which made up for the rather too comfortable love story.
Feminism as written by a rather conservative man in 1950. Some blunders, but mostly laudable. There's also some racism, that mostly - but not always - gets attributed to the characters. Still, this was a great read.
I clearly prefer the Seethaler who writes about the [b:mountains 22550484 Ein ganzes Leben Robert Seethaler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1406198884l/22550484.SY75.jpg 42007512] to the one who writes about old Vienna. You can feel the same melancholia, of cycles of life, or human bonds. But, I am less a fan of his gentle tapestries of characters, as is the case here.
Gilgi is a chipper young secretary with ambitious dreams and ideals, living through the Weimar Republic in Cologne. She's driven by a strong sense of independence, she expertly knows how to divert her boss' advances, she can party until 5am at the carnival, yet still diligently visit her language classes. All of this is challenged when she falls in love and is confronted with the rise of the depression in her city.
I just discovered Irmgard Keun, and this book and Gilgi's voice felt so fresh, despite it being written in 1931. Obviously it's a book of its time, but the sentiments, and Gilgi's quest for female independence still feel modern. The ending was devastating in so many ways, and yet still she manages to build herself a path out of it.
The German audiobook warrated perfectly and with so much flair by Camilla Renschke.
This started out fun, cyberpunk mixed with reference after references of 80ies pop culture. An adventureland quest to hunt down the most important inheritance of this dystopian future. But then you quickly realize that the writing is somehow lacking, that the story is not doing more than simply cueing more and more 80ies game trivia, and then you suddenly realize that this might be a YA novel. If you are a gamer you probably have a fun time reading this, if not, it's still quite entertaining but nothing more.
I was utterly charmed and wrecked by this book. It's an account of first love during a summer in Italy. Elio is a wise youth, Oliver is the house guest. They connect over a shared love for literature, music, the arts. There's an immediate intense bond, a push and pull ensues, mixed with the nervousness of youth, the intoxication of fear, shame, longing, the forbidden. The writing is sensual and lyrical, a beautiful love story.
Took me a while to finish. Even though I enjoyed it. But not as much as other Gleick books. Why? Possibly some of the physics went over my head. Despite the book balancing Feynman's work and more personal stories quite well. Or possibly because Feynman did so damn much in his carreer that it felt hard to hold on to a narrative thread.
This one has been living unread in my bookshelf for too long, so i thought i'd power through it. Which was rather easy as most of what it talks about i've read elsewhere before. The major part of the book establishes the always astonishing facts (that ‘you' are no in control, and that there is a team of rivals inside your brain). The last two chapters then depart from this, and Eagleman talks about what we are now meant to do with that information. How to move the legal system from rating blameworthiness to rating modifyability, how to look at nature and nurture as never being independent, and how the scientific belief in reductionism has its limits. He ends stressing that science's stance of today - that the final discoveries about consciousness and mysteries of the mind are just around the corner - is an illusion.
Told in lush and lyrical words, full of colors and sensory perceptions, this is the story of a family in India, of twin siblings Estha and Rahel and their beloved mother Ammu, and the tragedy that befell them all. The story is told by drawing circles through time, closing in on that one terrible thing that broke everyone apart.
I am sure this structure is what contributes to the allure of the book, as you know what's coming, and so tints everything with ominous tones, but at the same time it was also slightly frustrating, because it kept withholding the details for so long. I also felt it went on tangents towards the end of the book where it should just have focused on the main event. I am also of the mind that that reunion between the twins wasn't necessary.
Nevertheless, this was a beautiful book and I'll miss hearing stories about the two-egg twin ambassadors, ambassador Elvis Pelvis and ambassador stick insect. The language was so playful it worked really well for being consumed in audio-form, especially with all the children's singsong rhymes.
A city on rails that constantly needs to be moved to ‘stay at optimum'. The reasons for this are hidden from the major city population. The reader discovers the world together with the protagonist, who ventures into the past and the future of the city's pathway and slowly has to change his beliefs of what he thought reality was.
Amazing. Absolutely gripping even though there is not much action. Somehow it felt like Kōbō Abe's “The Woman in the Dunes” colliding with Greg Egan's “Incandescence”.
In her intro Moon mentions Ursula K. Le Guin (<3), Marlen Haushofer's [b:The Wall 586852 The Wall Marlen Haushofer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435260852l/586852.SY75.jpg 573687] (<33), and [b:Two Old Women 127810 Two Old Women An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival Velma Wallis https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348013323l/127810.SX50.jpg 528604] (which I don't know but obviously now need to read). So naturally, this felt like a book for me right from the start. While in Haushofer's novel the protagonist is forced into isolation, Moon's Ofelia craves solitude. She is old and cranky, and just sick of having to conform to other people's rules. When she tricks everyone and stays behind after a forced evacuation of their planetary settlement, she flourishes in her newfound freedom and so did I. Tending her vegetables, shedding all unnecessary clothing, and simply following her own rhythm without interruption and restrictions. Paradise! But then, a new set of newcomers arrive. They are different, and also won't leave her alone. And I was shaking with laughter at Ofelia's first reactions. Perfect scifi niche - feminism, social utopias, exploring language and communication with other beings, a focus on small moments, but also there's stuff happening. Plus it has a unique heroine.
DeLong's long 20th century goes from 1870 up until right after the financial crisis of 2008. In those 140 years humanity has made massive strides forward in technological improvements, quality of life and accumulation of wealth. The key change makers are: the research lab, corporations, and globalization. And so we're climbing towards an utopia, yet the further along we get on that climb, the more it becomes clear that a) we'll never be satisfied, and b) we don't agree on how to get there.
History and economic development is an oscillating climb. Two steps forwards (the gilded ages from 1870-to-WWI and WWII-to-1970) one step back (world wars). The highs seems to be tied to the lows and also the other way around. We need creative destruction in order to reinvent ourselves. And if we're doing too well, we reset our benchmarks for success, those on top get cocky, and discontent start to brew below. Economics growth followed by depressions.
This book is a fascinating attempt at a summary of the economy of the last 140 years. DeLong mostly tried to give a global picture, but still is too US-centric (it's always the same), especially in the last chapters. In addition, in the final chapters, he dives too deep into specific US political decision making, and loses his objective focus. Which was the guiding light for all the previous chapters. Still, I feel I learned a bunch, even though a lot of it was a bit overwhelming.
I feel I should read a primer on Keynes, Hayes, etc now
“The Market Giveth; The Market Taketh Away: Blessed Be the Name of the Market?”
Really quite excellent. Language shapes reality. A race that is genetically built to speak the truth, learns to lie. When communication demands the training of brain-link twins that act as ambassadors and translators of a two-tongue language.
I admire how Miéville takes you into this complex new world full of new terms and concepts without hand-holding. Same way you're supposed to learn a new language: By immersing yourself into it. No dictionaries :)
An author escapes the ailments of family members and books herself into a motel close to the desert. On a hike she encounters a cactus. What follows is a hallucinogenic desert survival story infused by grief.
Broder's writing is very funny in a deadpan way, and her audiobook narrator voice fits that style perfectly too. So there's a lot to chuckle along with. And yet I wanted more plot outside the navel-gazing and the drugged fever dreams. Thankfully the meta of the protagonist also writing a novel about a women going to the desert - was kept light.
C'est une merveilleuse petite nouvelle qui imagine le sejour de Michel-Ange Buonarotti a Constantinople au debut des annees 1500. C'est une histoire ancree sur quelques traditions ecrites et quelques lettres, mais avec une interpretation libre entre les deux.
On rencontre Michel-Angel comme jeune artiste, ambitieux et pauvre, qui est dechire entre le pape et le sultan, entre l'ouest et l'est, entre les desires evidents et les desires caches. Et Constantinople elle-meme est une ville en conflit, accueillant des gens de toutes cultures et religions, mais troublee pas les traces d'occupations et de guerres.
Merveilleusement poetique et romantique et un grand portrait imagine de la vie d'un artiste.
Beautiful. Makes me want to go look up what Marie's grand-grand-grand-daughters are up to ...
Not sure if this last volume's resolutions (the explanation for the plague, and the emotional endings) fully work for me, but nevertheless, this was a very fun series to read.
Berenice Einberg grandit sur une petite ile proche a Montreal. Ses parents se querellent tout le temp, et etant de religions differentes, ils ont divise leur deux enfants entre eux. La seule personne que Berenice adore librement, c'est son frere aine. Pour le reste de la monde elle ne ressent que de la furie et une haine compliquee. Personne ne sait comment la traiter. Elle est sauvage, elle veut vivre pleinement sa vie, une vie d'aventure et violence, elle veut conquerir et detruire tout. Elle est une poete folle, une philosphe, elle est intelligente, et son cerveau est en feu.
Parfois il etait dure a suivre Berenice a travers ses associations folles et ses reves et ses philosphes. Mais le personnage est tres unique et une force, et peut-etre un petit morceau de nous tous.
Even though we are all composites of many personalities, studies say about a third (even 30-50%) of us are introverts. And this subgroup has continuously been losing their foothold in this (western) world that about 100 years ago started to move from a culture appreciating character to a culture appreciating personality. Cain's book chronicles this cultural change and its repercussions, dissects what defines introversion and extroversion (most important: introvert does not equal shy), presents us with introverts struggling and with introverts succeeding in this world favoring the loud, the chatty, the spontaneous.
The book is clearly written pro-introverts and therefore has a very soothing characters for those of us falling into this category. I would define it as a pop-science comfort read, trying to heal some wounds and telling you it's okay to be quiet and to not want to be the life of the party.